22 P.D. 123 



mosquito control work, provided that towns and cities wherein said work was 

 performed must appropriate funds for the maintenance of same. In accordance 

 with this provision, the State Reclamation Board, December 14, 1931, certified to 

 the respective towns and cities the amounts required for maintenance during 1932. 

 Most of the towns appropriated in accordance with the assessment, although 

 several of them were slow in taking action and in sending in the funds, so that in 

 certain districts maintenance work was delayed. Wherever possible, work of 

 maintenance was started not later than May 15, and in every case men were em- 

 ployed from the towns in which the work was to be done, and the welfare or similar 

 board was consulted in securing this labor. 



Before the work of maintenance was completed, the supplementary budget of 

 1932 was enacted, which provided an additional appropriation for mosquito control 

 emergency work amounting to $130,000. The Board at once made allotments of 

 this new appropriation, and work was started in the former state projects, and 

 later in the three new state projects. 



Due to surveys made by the engineer and entomologist, the Board was able to 

 decide just where worth-while work could be done that would meet, in some degree, 

 the demand for employment, and still prove effective in the way of mosquito control. 



Accordingly allotments were made to the South Essex Project (including former 

 North Shore Project), South Shore Project, and Bristol-South Plymouth Project; 

 and three new projects were created, one in the town of Mashpee, which was par- 

 ticularly hard hit l^y unemployment, one in Martha's Vineyard, and one in Nan- 

 tucket. The allotments for these three projects were $5,000 each, and they were 

 of genuine service in reUeving unemployment, and also produced excellent results 

 in the work of mosquito control. 



The total expenditures for mosquito control work in state projects as distinct 

 from private projects was $221,122.91 in 1932. Of these expenditures, 91% was 

 paid direct to labor. In addition to these expenditures, there was spent in 1932 

 from funds appropriated and sent in by the towns assessed for maintenance work, 

 in accordance with Chapter 112 of the Acts of 1931, the sum of $16,875.85. In 

 1932, under the emergency appropriation, there were employed in mosquito con- 

 trol work 1,771 citizens of the Commonwealth, all of whom were taken from the 

 ranks of the unemploj'ed. 



The summer of 1932 gave gratifying evidence of the effectiveness of the mosquito 

 control work that had been done on the salt marshes of the state. Many localities 

 where the simimer season had regularly brought hordes of mosquitoes that in- 

 fested beaches, golf courses, hotels and summer homes, were completely free of 

 mosquitoes this year. This improvement of conditions has been shown by much 

 favorable comment in newspapers as well as several letters to the Reclamation 

 Board and the Commissioners of the various projects, and by word of mouth. 

 While it is true that the rainfall in the early summer was abnormally small, it is 

 also true that in that portion of the state where there are still large areas of un- 

 ditched salt marshes, mosquitoes were present in the usual numbers. Mosquito 

 breeding is greatly influenced by the amount of rainfall during the season; yet the 

 breeding on the salt marshes is affected to a much greater extent by the periodic 

 flooding of the marshes by the tides, which occur independent of rainfall. Previous 

 to the large-scale drainage of the salt marshes accomplished by the mosquito con- 

 trol work, mosquitoes were present in abundance regardless of conditions of rainfall. 

 Work on the salt marshes has resulted in a very marked diminution in the annoj^ance 

 from mosquitoes along the entire coasthne in the state, particularly from Gloucester 

 to the Rhode Island line. That portion of the state north of Gloucester still con- 

 tains too much unditched salt marsh to feel the favorable effects that have re- 

 sulted where a larger portion of marsh has been brought under control. Improved 

 conditions have already favorably affected summer resorts by practically elimi- 

 nating this principal handicap to the popularity of these seashore colonies. The 

 effects of salt marsh mosquito control have also extended to localities several miles 

 inland which were formerly infested by migrations of salt marsh mosquitoes. In 

 several cases there has been an actual check which proved that in 1931 certain 

 towns were infested by salt marsh mosquitoes, and after the ditching of the salt 

 marshes several miles distant in 1931, no infestations of salt marsh mosquitoes 

 occurred in these towns in 1932. 



